English Touring Opera Company returns to The Hawth, Crawley, in April with a season that focuses on storytelling through ‘bel canto’, beautiful singing, with new productions of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte and Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Both operas are performed in full costume and with a full orchestra.
Cosi fan tutte is, in many ways, Mozart’s most perfect opera score. In one day fiancés are parted and new fiancés found—or so it seems. Discovering they are not at all the people they thought they were is strange, exciting, and very embarrassing.
It will be directed by Paul Higgins and conducted by James Burton and is sung in English by a cast including Laura Mithell, Kitty Whately (Rosina in ETO’s The Barber of Seville in spring 2012) and Paula Sides, in period costume and an elegant, pastoral set.
Simon Boccanegra, one of Verdi’s greatest operas, has a score inspired by the sea. It is his most intimate opera, revised with care at the end of his life—but it also calls for the largest company ETO has fielded to date, in its first new Verdi production for several years.
Directed by James Conway and conducted by Michael Rosewell, the cast features Craig Smith in the title role, Keel Watson as his father-in-law Fiesco and Elizabeth Llewellyn singing
Amelia. Sung in Italian with English sub-titles, designs are inspired by the Anni di Piombo, or ‘Years of Lead’—a periods of political turmoil in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.
James Conway, ETO’s General Director, said, “Our plans in 2013 are very ambitious, but we have prepared for them for some time. In terms of imagery there is a theme running through them of people in cities governed by the sea. Mostly, though, our season reflects the diversity and richness of opera.”
Cosi fan tutte is on Tuesday 2 April and Simon Boccanegra is on Wednesday 3 April.
For tickets and further information, call 01293 553636 or see www.hawth.co.uk.